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In Some Bay Area Counties, College Grads Have Higher Unemployment (mercurynews.com)
Higher education is supposed to be the ticket to employment. But in some Bay Area counties, workers with a high school diploma have lower unemployment rates than those with bachelor's degrees or higher.
From a report: Experts suggested the Bay Area's backwards numbers, which run counter to the national trend, could be the result of too-few lower-wage workers, many of whom have been driven out by skyrocketing housing prices and the rising cost of living. "We have employers call us all the time (saying), 'I'm looking for low-wage, entry-level workers,'" said Kris Stadelman, director of NOVA Workforce Development in Sunnyvale. But there are few workers willing to take on those positions who don't already have jobs, she said.
In Santa Clara County, the heart of Silicon Valley, the unemployment rate for workers with a high school degree is 3.3 percent, compared to a 3.6 percent rate for workers with a bachelor's degree or higher, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's 2017 American Community Survey, which measures unemployment by educational attainment for workers between 25 and 64 years old. The same situation exists in two other Bay Area counties -- Marin and Sonoma -- where workers with at least a bachelor's degree don't have the lowest unemployment rate.
The trend is starkest in Sonoma County, where workers without a high school degree have a 0.2 percent unemployment rate compared to a 4.4 percent rate for workers with a bachelor's degree or higher. Workers with a high school diploma in that county have an unemployment rate of 2.8 percent. Statewide, workers with a high school diploma have an unemployment rate of 6.2 percent, nearly double the 3.5 percent rate of those with a bachelor's or higher.
In Santa Clara County, the heart of Silicon Valley, the unemployment rate for workers with a high school degree is 3.3 percent, compared to a 3.6 percent rate for workers with a bachelor's degree or higher, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's 2017 American Community Survey, which measures unemployment by educational attainment for workers between 25 and 64 years old. The same situation exists in two other Bay Area counties -- Marin and Sonoma -- where workers with at least a bachelor's degree don't have the lowest unemployment rate.
The trend is starkest in Sonoma County, where workers without a high school degree have a 0.2 percent unemployment rate compared to a 4.4 percent rate for workers with a bachelor's degree or higher. Workers with a high school diploma in that county have an unemployment rate of 2.8 percent. Statewide, workers with a high school diploma have an unemployment rate of 6.2 percent, nearly double the 3.5 percent rate of those with a bachelor's or higher.
Most college degrees have been worthless for 20 years, this is not news. Entering a trade right after high school and making money during your most productive years is MUCH better than spending that time going into six-figure debt for a worthless piece of paper. Higher education turned into a racket during the 1990's, probably before.
I think it's true just about everywhere. The old saying "More learnin', less earnin'," is truer now than it ever was.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
They do pay well. Maybe not in comparison to other jobs in the Bay Area, but that's something those commies up there will have to deal with on their own. Once it's too expensive to live there, for trades people, the programmers and other IT goobers will find the cost of repairs is going to shoot up. You pay for the labor and you pay for the commute to get to the labor. Supply and Demand... If your supply of plumbers is zero and the demand is greater than zero....
In areas outside of Silicon Valley a plumber can still earn a very comfortable living. The prospects look even better for continued wage growth as the amount of people becoming plumbers is dwindling. Plumbing is one of those jobs that will be around forever.. If the available pool continues to shrink the wages will continue to rise in response. Same thing is happening with electricians.. A friend with a construction company said his average pay for electricians is about $45/hour right now. I know that doesn't sound like a whole lot to a Bay Area person but in the regular world that's pretty damn good. The median income for CA is $60,336/yearly. $45/hour puts you at about $93,600/year. That's over 50% higher than the median. So basically, anywhere besides San Fran, you're earning a very good living.
When things go awry a competent plumber is a whole lot more important, at that moment, than just about any tech type job.. If your shit won't go down the toilet, fixing that becomes about the most important job in the world...
I'm not really surprised by this.. We have a glut of college educated people out there. Hiring those people for fields other than what they earned their degree in is.. risky at best.. If the job they are seeking, at the moment, is not what they have a degree in you can be fairly sure they are going to bounce when a more appropriate job comes along.
That means you're potentially wasting the training you may have to provide. Sure, you might get lucky and they stick around long enough that the training was still a good investment but your gain would be their loss, and that's not an ideal situation either.
The term for this phenomenon is "over qualified". Hiring a guy with a master's in math theory to do plumbing isn't gonna work out in the long term. That guy wants to do mathy stuff and he'll punch out the second he can. I don't fault him for that, of course, but if you're the potential employer that's a problem. Better to just spend the time training the guy with no degree who actually wants to be a plumber. Sure he might go work elsewhere for better wages, but that's at least something you can compensate for (pay more). No reasonable amount of $$ is going to make a math guy happy being a plumber.
Sonoma County is rural. Of course there are more jobs for people without degrees. You don't need that masters in CS degree to pick fucking grapes.
I'm not sure this phenomenon has anything to do with the value of a college education, or the number of H1B visas. It might just be a highly localized issue. Let's keep reading...
See what I mean?
You are welcome on my lawn.
for Nursing. All told it's going to cost me about $140k for 4 years (tuition, books, room, board, the car I had to buy her because it's physically impossible to take a bus from her morning classes to her clinicals in time, etc). Starting salary will be between $50-$70k/yr depending on the job she takes and where she takes it.
A trade pays $9/hr to start, $15/hr after a few years and then tops out at $25/hr. I did a stint as an electrician's apprentice so I'm pretty familiar (cut those numbers by about 30% for inflation and you know where I was at). You're gonna top out around $50k/yr, which is where my kid _starts_. Over 40-60 years of work that will add up fast. Not to mention she will have much, much better benefits.
Heck, if you're a teacher in it for the money you can start around $40k/yr as long as you're willing to move and/or commute to a wealthy district (the way districts are funded means if you want to teach in a poor neighborhood because you grew up there plan on getting shafted).
I see a lot of folks saying a degree ain't worth it, but it always seems to be the kind of folks who don't want to pay for kids to go to school. It's expensive as hell ($140k in my case and I'm cutting corners) so I get where they're coming from, but this is why our country gets flooded with H1-Bs. It lets the companies go to Congress and say "Well, we wanted to hire American, but we just can't find anyone with the _skills_ we need".
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...what do these unemployable graduates have degrees in?
Something useful that is a marketable skill that would lead to a decent job or a graduate degree in interpretive dance theory?
fuck you, you need to STFU before I do to you what I did to the guy that cut me off last week!
A lot of guys I knew in the trade were laid off 2-3 months out of the year doing odd jobs to get by. The company I worked for kept us year round and found busy work, but they could only do that because they had a nice business contract. Most tradesmen have lean months and a tough time throughout the year as a result. The huge cutback on infrastructure spending and, as a result, construction hasn't helped matters either.
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It's your fault for getting cut off. If there's less than 1 car length between your car and the car in front of you, no one can cut you off (or at least in the case of accident, they'll be at fault).
It's called defensive driving.